


Wake up, love, horror is dawning.

by meanpancake, naeviastark



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 05:31:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4734380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanpancake/pseuds/meanpancake, https://archiveofourown.org/users/naeviastark/pseuds/naeviastark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of one shots with different aus connecting Milady with death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lady Stoneheart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Milady dies but she receives the kiss of life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for the first shot: major character death, death, death, and more death. Violence, hangings. Everything is pretty much vague, and it's based on Milady's hanging in the book, except in the fic she dies and then comes back to life- inspired by Catelyn's story in ASoIaF.

When she wakes up, she is nothing.

She had been left to rot; that, she knows, she can see it. 

There are insects crawling and walking on her skin. She makes tight fists with her pale hands, crushing the ones that are on her palms and fingers. It’s not a feeling exactly, he took that away from her, but it’s something. It’s better than nothing. It’s little spots of blood on her hands.

The same priest that hanged her is now lying dead besides her. Where he should be, after all the bad years they spent together. She thinks her old self would have appreciated this image, of him lying between the rocks and the grass, his skin grey and dry. He deserves it.

She recognizes faintly that she would have liked to kill him with her own hands, although he died to bring her back to… life. So it must do.

Her body is covered in a dress with a translucent fabric (she wasn’t wearing it when she was murdered) and it moves in the wind as she walks away from the fake priest, away from the rocks,trees and the insects. Away from death itself.

Sometimes she kills a man, or a few. They are all faceless creatures, they all deserve death. Men bring nothing but pain to the world. She hangs them from trees, they beg her not to, they ask to know who she is. She doesn’t talk, they die.

He comes to the woods what feels like years later. If it wasn’t for him, her old self would be alive. She would be alive. She doesn’t remember him, vaguely she thinks she used to love him. Now she can’t feel anything. Maybe, if he dies, peace will find her way into her, as will death. Her job will be done, she can sense it.

The look on his face when he sees her indicates she is right. He looks scared, shocked, and weak. The men around him look confused.

It’s not the first time men put up a fight. It’s probably the fact that she was distracted, looking into his eyes, where her own image was probably reflecting, that makes her stumble for the first time since she started.

One of the men runs and takes a swing at her, she stabs him before she has time to think. This is messy, they are supposed to be hanged, they are supposed to beg for their lives. A second man shoots at her chest, the place where her heart once was. Her old self would have laughed, she does not.

She comes closer and stabs him too. Hanging him would be almost an honor for him. A quick, unimportant death suits him better. The third companion of the man is the hardest to kill, but she manages just fine, she stabs him too. She is not tired, she doesn’t get tired.

The man is now on his knees, he is crying, he is begging, but not to her. To God. She smiles at the creature, God does not exist, or he wouldn’t have been so cruel to her.

Hanging him is easy, he doesn’t fight it. He apologises instead, over and over. Until it’s done. Her job is done. She hangs the other three bodies and steps away to look at them. 

She doesn’t realize her heart is beating again until she falls down on her knees. The bullet holes in her chest are bleeding. She looks up at the four hanging figures one last time. Her job is done. She dies with his name on her lips. Her dead-self chides her for being weak.


	2. she, who defeats death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Death, hanging, choking.

She has always thought death would be a stranger, a faceless creature ripping her from the world, sucking the breath out of her lungs, making her heart stop in its tracks, overwhelming her so she falls to her knees, and gives in.

She has always thought death would be cold but merciful, take her by surprise, giving her a chance to fight and struggle for her life.

She has always thought death would embrace her, like an old friend, and stay with her until she’s gone.

She has always thought she wouldn’t hate death.

She has always been wrong.

Death is indeed a stranger, at first, and he indeed rips her from the world (from _her_ world that is, from the streets of Paris, from hunger and poverty), and he leaves her breathless, makes her heart jump, and her knees weak. She surrenders to him. She surrenders to him, freely.

_Anne, you are everything to me. Please be my wife._

Death is warm, but he knows no mercy. She begs him to believe her, but he won’t be moved by her words. By the truth. He informs her that she’ll hang, and she’s too hurt to fight, too betrayed to struggle. She surrenders to him again, defiantly.

_Kill me. Watch me die. It’s the least you can do to honour our love._

But death does not embrace her, death leaves her floating above the ground, like a scornful lover, and he leaves her. She learns that death is a coward. This time, she does not surrender.

She hates death with every beat of her dying heart, with every breath she can’t take, with every fiber of her being. And then… she’s not dead. Scarred, breached, humiliated. But alive. Death has touched her, marked her, but he hasn’t taken her.

She learns that death has a weakness. She’s his weakness, and she will use it against him.

She starts to call death by his name, _Athos_ , beloved Athos, dearest husband, _my heart_.

She finds him, years later, and Athos isn’t death anymore. Not for her.

_Anne-_

_You killed Anne a long time ago._

She’s become death now, born from the burned-out ashes of what once was her marriage, her love, her life, and she rises. Athos looks at her, and she is merciful where he wasn’t, the blade sharp and swift, and she stays, holds him in the final moments. He smiles in surrender.

Milady has always thought that death couldn’t be killed. Pulling the hood of her black coat over her head, stepping away from Athos’ dead body, she realizes that she’s proved herself wrong.

_Death is dead, long live death._


	3. Las Intermitencias de la muerte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death knows two things about mortals: They are ungrateful if they die and they are ungrateful if they live. But then she meets Ninon and everything changes. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic inspired by Saramago's "The Intermittences of death" which i read in my final year of school and, to say it softly, i hated it.   
> But times have changed and this is actually the story that inspired the whole collection so clap clap, great job my dude.
> 
> The pairing for this fic is Milady/Ninon and there are no warnings bc its pretty fluffy, except for a few mentions of death. Milady's name in the fic is simply 'death'

She sits in the chair in the corner of the room. She knows she should go back to her house, she knows she sent a purple letter almost a week ago to an old lady. She knows the lady will be waiting.

The woman in the bed in front of her is sound asleep, with her cat curled around her. The woman isn’t special. She is good at playing the harp. She is pretty, but death has killed prettier, more talented, more extraordinary. 

Death looks at the breathing beings and thinks back to how it all started. A year ago, she had been furious. She works to help humans, but humans are ungrateful. Decade after decade she did the same thing everyday, heard the same cursings, the same cries. Decade after decade, humans became more ungrateful of her job.

She decided then to stop working. The next day in the city of Paris, nobody died. At first, nobody noticed and a few days went by. She expected to see the humans happy, she left her home and walked the streets of Paris, and she realized nothing had changed. People were still mad, at one thing or the other.

After a week the news ran. Nobody had died for a week, people were happy, they celebrated. But when a week turned into two weeks and two weeks turned into more, the people of Paris started complaining. A family cried because their grandfather was supposed to die weeks ago, but he held onto life, by a miracle. A cruel miracle the family said.

Death was still angry, still ignoring her job. She knew it couldn’t last long enough, Death (the oldest of all deaths and the commander of them, the only one whose name was meant to always be written with a capital D) was going to pay her a visit and force her back to doing her job. To death’s surprise, the visit was farther than expected, and after months and chaos in the city of Paris, Death arrived, and death was forced to do her job again.

So she had gone back to work, but this time something was different. She has had time, over the months, to think about a way to make people happier with her job. She decided that upon going back to work she was going to install a letters system. The system was supposed to work like this: She writes a letter telling the person they are gonna die, and sends it a week before their end is due. This way, she thinks, people will be grateful.

Of course, she should have known better, and people are not. The chaos continues, first because people didn’t die, now because they know they are gonna die. Death ignores it and continues to write and send the purple envelopes. Purple becomes the color of panic.

Two months after the system had been installed, she received a letter back. She sent it again, thinking it had been a mistake, but the letter came back again. She sent it, and the letter returned. So she sent it again, and again, and again, with no different results.

That’s why she is here now. This is the woman the letter belonged to. This is the woman who should be dead by now. The woman who’s defying nature. She feels confused, and upset, and angry. She thinks if she could cry, maybe she would. 

She walks around the house to calm down. She walks into the music room, where there’s a piano and the famous harp. She had seen the woman play it. Ninon de Larroque. That’s the name that was on the banner at the Opera house yesterday, where death had gone to see her play. There was something about the way Ninon played, with her feelings showing strongly on her face, that had changed death, althought she didn’t want to admit it.

Going back to bedroom, and sitting back in the chair she feels restless. Some time later, she watches as the cat wakes up, streches, and walks over Ninon and to the chair. The cat jumps into her lap and becomes a little ball there, falling asleep as if it was an usual thing. It’s not an usual thing for death, it’s the first time there’s an animal in her lap. She touches it and the cat meowls soflty. She doesn’t dare to move until the cat leaves her lap hours later. 

The next days, while she waits for a solution to her problem, she follows Ninon around. Goes with her to the Opera house and watches her practice, sits in the car next to her when she goes back home, watches her eat dinner, sometimes she even stays the night in the chair, with Farida in her lap.

She decides the best way to get Ninon to recieve her letter is to give it to her herself. To manage this, death needs to transform into a human. She goes home, disappears inside a secret room and when she comes out her black cloak and bones are changed for the human body of a woman that seems to be on her thirties in a thight dress with high heels. It was a nightmare, but looking at herself in the mirror, she felt satisfied. She looked good, Ninon wouldn’t be able to resist her.

She makes a small purse appear in the air and puts the purple envelope belonging to Ninon inside of it. With a final look in the mirror she is ready to leave. Death appears in the middle of the city, and discovers how weak humans eyes are when faced with the sun. She clicks her fingers and a pair of sunglasses appear on her face. She is ready to find Ninon.

Death walks until she finds a motorcycle, without preamble she takes a seat and clicks her fingers again. The motorcycle starts noisly and she is on her way to Opera house, unaware of the owner of the bike gaping at her retreating figure. Once at the place, she buys a ticket for the best spot in the audience. She is ready to be seen, to make her move.

She watches the orchestra play through the night, paying little attention to those who weren’t Ninon. She was wearing a long sparklyng white dress, and she was the center of attention. In that moment, death felt something close to adoration.

When the show ends, death walks away and into the alley, stops by the door that leads backstage, and waits. Ninon comes out and when she sees her, she looks kind of scared, and tries to back away.

“Don’t run now. I just came to thank you for a wonderful night.”

Ninon smiles at her, “Thank you, althought I don’t think I deserve your attention.” 

Death clickes her tongue, “The audience thought differently, I assure you.”

Ninon laughed softly, “Thank you, but I assure you, you will all forget about me tomorrow.”

“Oh but you don’t know me, I could never forget you. Come with me to have a drink.”

The musician shakes her head, “I can’t, miss. It’s late.”

Death smiles seductively, “Don’t call me miss, I’m Milady,” she offers her hand and Ninon shakes it.

“Alright, Milady, maybe you could walk me home.”

Death agrees with a nod of her head and they walk to Ninon’s. The house she has already been in so many times inside. As if by pure casuality, once they are there Ninon invites her in. They spend the night together, the purple envelope forgotten. Once Ninon is asleep, Milady will get up from bed, take the purple envelope to the kitchen, and light it on fire. 

The next day, nobody will die.


End file.
